Development and application of dairy-based sustainable livelihood security index in the districts of West Bengal, India: A tool for dairy development planning

The concept of sustainable livelihood security has wider generic meaning pertaining to sustainable development to ensure ecologically secure, economically efficient, socially equitable and sufficiency in infrastructure in the society. Dairying provides sufficient income to the farming community of West Bengal. Therefore, sustainability of dairy-based livelihood in the districts of West Bengal was assessed to find out necessary interventions to be required to ensure sustainable livelihood security of dairy farmers. An exclusively district level Dairy-based Sustainable Livelihood Security Index was developed underline the principle of Human Development Index of United Nations Development Programme by using 17 indicators divided into four sub-indices i.e. Ecological Security index, Economic Efficiency Index, Infrastructural Sufficiency Index and Social Equity Index. The overall mean value of Dairy-based Sustainable Livelihood Security Index was found to be 0.38 with a range from 0.12 (Purulia district) to 0.59 (Darjeeling district), indicated the sustainability status was low. In case of sub indices, Infrastructural Sufficiency Index (0.49) and Ecological Security Index (0.45) were stronger indices than other two indices, Economic Efficiency Index (0.32) and Social Equity Index (0.29) which signified the very lower level sustainability. Districts were categorized for better interpretation into four based on overall Sustainable Livelihood Security Index score as very low (less than 0.3), low (0.3–0.54), medium (0.55–0.70) and high (greater than 0.70). Districts namely Maldah, Uttar Dinajpur, Purulia were having very lower level sustainability in dairy-based livelihood. But, it was moderately sustainable in the districts of Darjeeling, Nadia and Hooghly. Hence, Dairy-based Sustainable Livelihood Security Index (SLSI) is not only highlighting the state of sustainability of dairy-based livelihood but also emphasized the area where necessary policy matters to be intervened for improvement of livelihood of dairy farmers.